Posted
by
BeauHDon Tuesday November 14, 2017 @09:00AM
from the reinvent-the-wheel dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Quartz: African countries have worked hard to improve children's access to basic education, but there's still significant work to be done. Today, 32,6 million children of primary-school age and 25,7 million adolescents are not going to school in sub-Saharan Africa. The quality of education also remains a significant issue, but there's a possibility the technology could be part of the solution. The digital revolution currently under way in the region has led to a boom in trials using information and communication technology (ICT) in education -- both in and out of the classroom. A study carried out by the French Development Agency (AFD), the Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie (AUF), Orange and Unesco shows that ICT in education in general, and mobile learning in particular, offers a number of possible benefits. These include access to low-cost teaching resources, added value compared to traditional teaching and a complementary solution for teacher training. This means that there's a huge potential to reach those excluded from education systems. The quality of knowledge and skills that are taught can also be improved.

While we're at it, let's bring back slavery./sA good argument can be made that the colonial exploitation of Africa is the cause of most of their current problems. For hundreds of years, Africa has been exploited for natural resources, slave labor and restricted education and development opportunities. It's still going on. The rest of the world still looks on Africa as a "resource" to be exploited (China is the latest to take advantage of Africa). Best to get rid of colonial powers.

The problem is, as said in TFS: "32,6 million children of primary-school age and 25,7 million adolescents are not going to school". Step one: get them in school, where a teacher has access to them.

Then this: "ICT in education...offers a number of possible benefits...these include access to low-cost teaching resources"

Um, no. Low cost is chalk and a blackboard. Pencil and paper. Using digital technology, especially for primary school children, is an idiotic idea. The kind of idea dreamed up by technology fans who haven't got the slightest clue about the actual challenges facing the kids there.

Any technological device would also end up being robbed by the local warlord. This is the primary obstacle for making sub-Saharan Africa less of a hellhole.

Right. It's all the stolen OLPC that makes life so hellish in Africa, it's not the lack of water, healthy food, sanitation, shelter, genocides, and slavery trade that make it so bad. It's that the poor African school-age child lost access to the OLPC that was never shipped to Africa, to be used in their non-existant school, where their non-existant teacher would explain to them that learning to program in squeak would unlock a six-figure job in silicon valley when they turn 18...

It's that the poor African school-age child lost access to the OLPC that was never shipped to Africa,

I was trying to remember the blue-sky utopian program that was supposed to put laptops in the hands of kids in Africa. I gave up on them when they couldn't manage to fulfill their BOGO deal after I paid them. They kept coming up with excuses for not sending me the one they owed me. They tried pushing it past the three month, IIRC, time frame where I could cancel the order, so I cancelled it. Are any of those people still alive?

Because to these "humanitarians" once we drop internet-linked tablets into the hands of starving Africans they can just order up a case of bottled water and basic food supplies from Alibaba, Amazon, Harrods, or other online retailer... See, problem solved.

Brilliant.

Almost as brilliant as requiring people that can't afford to buy health insurance to pay a fine to subsidize the premiums of other people's healthcare coverage, but I digress...

The problem is, as said in TFS: "32,6 million children of primary-school age and 25,7 million adolescents are not going to school". Step one: get them in school, where a teacher has access to them.

Then this: "ICT in education...offers a number of possible benefits...these include access to low-cost teaching resources"

Um, no. Low cost is chalk and a blackboard. Pencil and paper. Using digital technology, especially for primary school children, is an idiotic idea. The kind of idea dreamed up by technology fans who haven't got the slightest clue about the actual challenges facing the kids there.

Do the math on that... I don't have numbers, but do the math on that... chalk and a blackboard are inexpensive, but they also are without content and without value for anything other than stick figures and smiley faces unless there is a really really good teacher to go along with them.

If you are talking about digital content it is relatively cheap to distribute versus the cost of either books or the cost to educate teachers and move them into a community... also even if you do get a teacher (even a good tea

Um, no. Low cost is chalk and a blackboard. Pencil and paper. Using digital technology, especially for primary school children, is an idiotic idea. The kind of idea dreamed up by technology fans...

That seems correct because generations who learned that way did not suffer for it. All those people who built Apollo hardware and sent man to the moon learned that way, so did the great scientists and writers; John von Neumann and William Shakespeare did not learn to read on iPads. However, the argument for digital education is fundamentally economic, yet your argument about the efficacy and comparative prices of paper, pencils, chalk and blackboards does not address overall costs of education in circums

Have you been to poor Africa?It is unbelievably poor - we are not talking 1/100 of your money, not 1/1000. There poverty is really like 1/10000 - maybe more.They are so staggeringly poor and so many, that you feel completely hopeless to help.

Even if you sold every thing and lived on the street, you would still have a better access to food and water and shelter.

Every time II say this (and yes, I have been to Africa), I get labeled as a troll. And yes, it's all true.

I think the problem is is that the gap is so mind boggling huge, that there is not frame of reference to describe it. Africa is great place, even the un-touristy areas.I wish everyone could go for a visit and think the world wold be a lot better if they did.

Send them the iPads my kids use in school. Damn things are horrible for anything but rote math drilling. Daughter was trying to show her work by zooming in and writing between questions with her finger. The rule in this house is to do it on paper.
Don’t let Apple into your schools.

The OLPC was a bad idea on paper, and a total failure in practice. We don't need "possible benefits", we need to do stuff that we know works. I've had enough of corporations (Microsoft, now Orange) throwing billions at educational experiments.

Except perhaps the ehm... 1.2 billion people living there (projected to grow to ~4 billion [wikipedia.org] over this century, or just under 40% of the world population). Or those countries that are affected when people from Africa migrate there. Like Europe & the Middle East. Or people affected by climate change when fossil fuel usage goes up across the continent.

So like it or not: what happens in Africa affects the rest of the world. Including you.

Actually, what you need is a critical mass of people making these things relevant. A friend was teaching in an African school, and after a couple of years kinda had the epiphany, or maybe doubt, that in their current level of developmentt higher education was not really what was needed. These things take many generation to develop

Obviously we've addressed the issues of access to clean water, healthy food, shelter, and an end to genocide and slavery in Africa, so now we can focus on providing school age children access to internet-connected tablets and reinvent education in Africa.

We did address the water, food, shelter, genocide and slavery issues in Africa right? I mean, why else would we focus on teaching techniques in lightly-attended schools?